MUZAFFARABAD: Rallies were organised across Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Monday to remind the United Nations (UN) of its decades-old promise of holding a plebiscite in the disputed Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir.

In Muzaffarabad, a rally was taken out from Garhi Pan Chowk under the aegis of Pasban-e-Hurriyat (PeH), an organisation of Kashmiri migrants, with its participants holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans in support of right to self determination for Kashmiri people.

The rally concluded outside the office of UN Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) near Domel, where a symbolic sit-in was also staged.  

On January 5, 1949, the UN General Assembly passed one of its several resolutions on Kashmir, envisaging a UN sponsored referendum to allow Kashmiris to decide whether they wanted to remain with India or join Pakistan.

While pro-Pakistan Kashmiri groups mark January 5 as ‘Right to Self Determination Day’, nationalist groups, averse to Kashmir’s merger with either India or Pakistan, observe it as a ‘black day’.

These groups call for reunification of all divided parts of Kashmir and their emergence as an independent and sovereign state.

Speaking at the PeH rally, representatives of various outfits, including Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) AJK, castigated India for denying Kashmiris their internationally-acknowledged right to self determination.

Kashmir, they pointed out, was not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan but an issue of the inalienable right of its inhabitants to decide their own future.

Speakers also condemned Indian soldiers for killing Pakistani troops through deception on December 31 when two Punjab Rangers personnel invited for a flag meeting were greeted by Indian border guards with a volley of unprovoked fire.

“Pakistan army should give a befitting response to the Indian occupation forces for such a ghastly act,” said Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi, JuD AJK chapter leader.

Another event was organised at the press club led by Kashmir Cell, an AJK government institution mandated to highlight the Kashmir issue.

The event was addressed by Jamaat-i-Islami AJK leader Shaikh Aqeelur Rehman and some local ruling Pakistan People’s Party leaders. However, none of the AJK cabinet members could make an appearance at the event.

Participants of the official programme later also marched to the UNMOGIP where they presented a joint memorandum with PeH calling upon the UN to make up for its failure in Kashmir by implementing its resolutions.

Meanwhile, National Students Federation (NSF), a hard-line nationalist group, staged a rally against “limiting of the right to self determination to accession with India or Pakistan”.

“No country or institution can restrict the right to self determination of the Kashmiris,” said NSF President Sardar Talha on the occasion.

“If the UN has to save the vestige of its goodwill, it will have to take the Kashmiris on board as a principal party and ensure complete withdrawal of Indian and Pakistani troops from Kashmir for an amicable solution to this problem,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2015

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